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For some his work rate, hustle and unpredictability have been a boon for the club, for others he simply hasn’t been the elite goalgetter that the club felt they were paying for when they stumped up an initial £64m plus add-ons to acquire him from Benfica in 2022.

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But with the arrival of Hugo Ekitike and the continued pursuit of Newcastle United’s wantaway frontman Alexander Isak, the writing has been on the wall for some time for Nunez, who netted in game one of the two-game friendly double header with Athletic Club Bilbao at Anfield on Monday.

A sale to Al-Hilal, if completed, has seen plenty of reports claim that the guaranteed £46.2m fee would have Liverpool seeing a loss on the player.



That’s not true, and a Nunez sale would continue a run of hugely profitable sales for the Reds.

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Transfer fee outlay is spread over five years through an accounting process known as amortisation, with the guaranteed fee divided by the length of a player’s contract.

The Premier League and UEFA last year capped amortisation at five years, regardless of contract length in response to Chelsea’s tactic of seven, eight and nine-year deals.

But profit on player sales can be booked in its entirety when a deal is done, even if the cash is to be received via instalments, which for big deals is almost always the case.

That means the amortisation costs added to the balance sheet for Liverpool are actually dwarfed by the profit made on players.

Nunez was signed on a six-year deal from Benfica when the old rules were in situ, and that means this summer he had a remaining book value of around £32m.

A sale over and above that is accounting profit for the club and helps keep amortisation costs from spiralling at a time when the club have added significantly this window.

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At a £46.2m fee, that is £14.2m in terms of an accounting profit.

Had they failed to get more than his remaining book value then it would have been seen as a loss and an impairment charge hits the books, with the sale of a player less than the remaining book value.

Nunez’s fee is good business for the club from a financial perspective, and potentially a competitive standpoint as they look set to deploy funds into adding to the attacking areas to upgrade.


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